Fatherhood
by Loonyloops
Summary: ***Spoilers for Allegiant*** This takes place twenty years after the epilogue of Allegiant. Tobias thinks about one of his tattoos and his life. Then he has a conversation with his daughter.


**A/N Like most everyone else I was a bit heartbroken at the end of Allegiant so I had to do a little writing therapy. This takes place twenty years after the epilogue. As with most of the things I write, this was supposed to be a sad, sappy story, but it went sideways and ended up on the cute side. I had to make Tobias happy again. Just to disclaim, I do not own anything.**

Fatherhood

Tobias Eaton glanced at his arm as he moved to place the papers in the tray on his desk as he finished up for the day. It had been years since he had paid attention to the tattoo that adorned his right forearm. It was four letters of simple script. He had gotten it the day he zip-lined from the top of the Hancock building. It was another way he could honor her on that day, the anniversary of the day they "met". He remembered the sting at the needle slowly spelled out T-r-i-s on the inside of his right wrist. He smiled at the memory, and the coincidence that the letters of her name number the same as the name he once called his own – Four.

It did not matter that people could see the bold ink on his arm or sticking out of the collar of his shirt. There were many former Dauntless gracing these halls and offices with their presence. He sat staring at his arm, twenty years rewinding in his mind to the day he had met his one true love. Yes, he had seen her around during his childhood, but he had not known her. On her Choosing Day she had looked so small, and still so Dauntless, even in Abnegation gray.

In the hallway he can hear everyone going about their jobs running the city, but the faint sound of her laughter in his mind is what he focuses on. It is so hard for him to recall after so much time has passed, but he tries anyway. It still aches to think about her, but not in the way it did those first few years. Now it is the ache of what could have been if she had lived. She would like this new city he had worked so hard to help build. He looked out his office window to the people walking the street below. He had worked for Johanna for years before gaining his own place on the Council. It was several more years before Johanna stepped down, ready to return to the former Amity fields where she felt most at home. Now he was the leader of the Council of the city and had been for a few years now. However, he had never gotten used to it. It did not matter that he had made the decision to work toward change in a peaceful manner. He had never wanted to be in a leadership position, until he was.

That one small word decorating his forearm had dictated so many things in his life that he had thought were his own decisions. Only now, staring at the twenty year old ink, did he realize just how much of his life now he could trace directly back to Tris. He still lived in the building he had moved to after his return from the Compound, but his apartment now was bigger and tastefully furnished. He had decided he would never pick up another gun after losing so many people, especially her, so he went into leadership. So many things from his life began to float through his memory along with a correlating reason that came directly from knowing Tris. He realized just how much love he still carried for her.

Surely those closest to him had known. Why had none of them, not even Christina-the-former-Candor, ever brought it up? Christina had gone with him to the old Dauntless compound to one of the tattoo shops set up in there after he had spread Tris' ashes. She was the one to suggest it, and it had been the perfect idea. She had gotten one too, it was the Abnegation symbol. _In honor of my friend_, she had said. He thought it was nice.

The thought occurred to him that his wife had never asked about that particular tattoo, but she had asked about the one on his back not long after they started dating. She had even mentioned the one on his side, but never his arm. She was from the fringe originally and knew nothing about the factions, or what life had been like before. At the time he had never thought someone who did not know his city's history would interest him. She had been patient and persistent. Unfortunately for her, she asked him out on Choosing Day. Not that there was a Choosing Day any more, but he still held that day close to his heart. He had yelled at her and stormed off. The next week he came to her office to apologize for yelling and he asked her to lunch. It had become a comfortable joke between the two of them over the years.

Tobias loved his wife very much, but she was the very opposite of Tris in every way. Maybe that was why he chose her, yet another decision dictated by his knowing Tris. He was thankful for that decision though as he shifted his gaze from his arm to the child's drawing on the corner of his desk. His daughter would be five years old this year, and his son had just turned two. Looking into their faces he could almost forget all the terrible things he had seen and done in his life. Their innocence helped him see past the pain of the past that would even now seep into his chest when he was not paying attention and wake him during the night.

Just last week his daughter had come up to him and asked him to draw on her so she could be just like him. It had twisted his gut to think of his precious, innocent daughter being anything like him. She was too young to know about all the pain, anger and sadness that had been the reasons for his tattoos. So he had smiled at her and made a joke and distracted her from the pen in her hand. He did not know what he would do when or if she decided to get a tattoo when she was older. He had joked with his wife that night about choosing that day to die of a heart attack. He was not picky, he would settle for a stroke. Dauntless had taught him how to survive a lot of things; fatherhood had not been among them. He was not brave enough to raise a girl. His son was easy. He treated him the way he had wanted to be treated by his father. But a girl, that was hard. He had said he would never use a gun again, but he might rethink that when the first boy asked her out. He was going to lose his mind if he kept borrowing trouble from the future. He had enough to worry about in the present.

"Daddy!" the squeal preceded a pink and black streak into his office.

"Hope," he said. "What are you doing here so early?'

"It's not early, silly Daddy. It's suppertime." She said all this as she jumped into his lap and pressed her sticky fingers into his cheek.

Ignoring the goo he looked into her eyes, so much like his own, and said, "I guess I just got carried away with my thoughts. Are you ready to go home?"

"Yup. What does pansycake mean?"

Tobias almost choked as he got to his feet bringing her with him. "Where did you hear that word?"

"From some boys at the playground, they were older."

"Well, let's not use that word anymore. And please don't start repeating everything the boys on the playground say."

She had not heard him, though, because she had already jumped from his arms and run back into the hall to his assistant's desk for another piece of candy. He rolled his eyes. How could he think he was more important than candy? He was glad that his children would grow up safe and happy and free to choose whatever path they wanted. It was so different from the life he known that sometimes he looked at them and thought they lived on another planet. Maybe someday he would tell them the story of his tattoos, the personal side of the story they would learn in their Chicago History class at school. The leadership had recognized early on that the children needed to know just how their parents, and their parents before them, had lived. For now though, he simply followed a pink and black blur down the hallway toward the other half of his family feeling a sting on his arm as if the tattoo was band new. And he let himself remember for just a few more minutes, the sound of her laughter and her smiling face, before tucking the memories close to his heart and turning his attention on his daughter, whom he would teach to be brave and kind and selfless and honest and smart.

"Daddy, want some candy?" He grimaced as a very sticky hand tugged his and the other hand offered him a used piece of candy that he was pretty sure had dirt on it.

Yes, he would teach her all those things, if he lived that long.

**Well, that is my take on where Tobias ended up. I hope that is a decent place for him to be.**


End file.
